


potatoes

by saturno



Category: Original Work
Genre: Asphyxiation, Blood and Injury, Choking, Lowercase, M/M, Marijuana, PWP without Porn, Recreational Drug Use, Shotgunning, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:43:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturno/pseuds/saturno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>weird interpersonal power dynamics</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. spuds

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually the same guy from the craigslist story and his roommate/semi boyfriend(?). just wanted to write some mild pwp lol

"potatoes."

that's not his name. he has a name but that's fallen apparent victim to his Buddy's tendency to identify everything and everyone by the first most immediate feature. for some fucking reason.  
he eats a lot of carbs is all. for his running. he could've called him runner or nikes or something, that would've been better, but the first things he saw when he came into "potatoes"' apartment for the first time were all the boxes of instant potatoes and not his sneakers.  
so he doesn't respond right away. because that isn't his name.

" _potatoes._ "  
his Buddy's standing in the kitchen doorway now. potatoes feels him staring at the bridge of his nose.

"what."

so much for not responding.

"are you busy?"  
that isn't a question because the only right answer is No. potatoes pushes into his left temple with the big soft pad of his thumb. does gene wait for him to be high before he does this? he always feels so nervous when this happens, and sometimes he thinks gene can smell that anxiety on him. sometimes it feels like he can see into his thoughts somehow.

"i'm high as fuck." potatoes mumbles with his eyes closing, brow knitting slowly. he feels the pit of his stomach beginning to twist. that deep down dark panic just barely starting to nibble.  
"that's fine." he's taking off his coat and slinging it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. potatoes doesn't look at him. he passes by him to the sink just behind potatoes' seat, slipping into the tight space between the counter top and the back of his chair. potatoes hears the creaking twist of the faucet coming on. he's washing his face and hands. he can see gene's dropped knit hat lying on the kitchen floor, out of the corner of his eye.

he isn't entirely sure if his name is gene, but it's the name he gave him the first time around, when they first met. he saw no reason to suspect anything until he heard him answering to other names over the small fragments of what he could overhear from his phone conversations.  
he isn't really sure if he wants the answer to any questions he has about that. at the end of the day, it's not his business.

gene is sitting in a chair with his feet up on the corner of the table. shoes still on. rude. he fishes a crushed newport out of his back pocket and turns towards him.

"do you mind?"

wordlessly potatoes is picking up his lighter. flick. flick. he needs to refill it. finally it takes, and he stretches his arm out towards gene's mouth. the cigarette tip ignites and blooms into red heat as he pulls, smoke curling out of his nose and between the gaps in his teeth. he tilts back and blows smoke towards the lightbulb in the ceiling in one long slow burst. potatoes imagines him briefly, stupidly, as some kind of dragon. some kind of demon.  
without thinking he finds himself picking up the remaining unsmoked half of the blunt he'd been nursing. scatterings of tobacco had stuck to the front of his shirt as he'd gutted the cigar earlier for it and had gotten on the white tiled floor, sticking out against the starkness like dead black insects. gene buddy boy leans in again, molten cherry pushing forward and finally hissing against the unlit end of the blunt.  
paul takes a huge hit and holds it until his chest begin to burn, whining for oxygen. he can feel a creature climbing into his lap and above him, skull obscuring the watery light from the ceiling, casting a shadow over his face, his eyes. gene pushes down against his mouth and sucks in deep as paul releases, pulling the smoke from his lungs into his own. retreating further and further to some kind of hindbrain self, the anxiety parts into a heated wave as his dick jerks stupidly in his pants.  
gene doesn't want to be allowed to breathe it back out then.  
he knows this because gene takes his free hand and pulls it up to his neck. things just cant go nicely. they always have to get weird like this. paul pushes down into the front of his neck and squeezes because he doesn't want to have an argument, but not so hard. he feels himself becoming flatter somehow, the room twisting lengthwise.

"a little tighter," the thing says near voicelessly, eyes narrowing to slits, pushing the palms of his hands down against paul's fingers on his throat. thoughtlessly he squeezes harder until the thing in his lap is clenching the muscles in his face, making a noise like saran wrap, little squeaks and gritted wet teeth. he holds for a moment, one, two, then releases his grip, and smoke immediately steams out of his face like something inside his body is burning. his hips jerk along with the rest of him as he coughs deep, heavy, into his hand, the back of his wrist. slowly, eventually, his breathing resumes but his hips keep moving, grinding down into his lap, a slow mindless squirm.

"again?"


	2. everything at once

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief continuation. possibly more in the future. title is a [swans track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUWP1sEdgJ8)

paul can hear him in the back room, the second half of the cramped 1 bedroom apartment, just around the 90 degree angle of the hallway. the lights are off when he opens the door, and the air spills out thick and smokey, the smells of rubbing alcohol and overwhelming tobacco smoke, sticky and moist, clinging deep into his clothes, into the walls, ruining any hope of paul getting his security deposit back. it's a burn on the back of his sinuses as he breathes in once through his nose and looks in.

he's naked there under the bedsheets, the fabrics twisted around him like rumpled wet wings. newly hatched moth in a plume of smokey dense powder. paul can see him holding a wet white sock, the source of the pungent alcohol burn in his nose, pushing it down hard on a spot on his back, just over his shoulderblade. the alcohol is running down his back and soaking into paul's bedsheets.

he looks behind him then and sees paul. paul feels the two of them locking eyes like a magnetic force. feels himself unable to stop staring. the sock is pinkening, absorbing red blooming underneath. gene moves his hand and paul can see the angry puncture half moon edges of a sloppy human bitemark, chewed in and chewed in until the skin broke. gene's face is so wet and his eyes are such a deep red bloodshot that it hurts paul somewhere inside to look.

" _get out,_ " gene gurgles, crackles, his voice so hoarse and quiet and raw that it barely sounds human. insectoid.

paul shuts the door.


End file.
